Philosophy

Mortality

I’ve been listening to the book Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. I’m a few chapters in, but I’m already finding the book very informative and thought provoking.

Gawande paints a compelling picture of what it means to grow old in our society and how old age has changed in recent history. Living over the age of 70 used to be a fairly uncommon achievement, but with modern medical advancements, it is almost commonplace. That fact has many implications for how the elderly are treated, and how they want to live in their twilight years.

On the Uncertainty of Everything

I watched a series of videos of an interview with Richard Feynman today. I highly recommend that you make the time to check them out. (If you don’t know who Richard Feynman is, you should look him up.) While watching the interview, I gained insight into a number of ideas.

One of these is the nature of knowing things. Feynman shares an anecdote of one interaction with his father. He asked his father why a ball in a wagon will roll to the back of the wagon when the wagon is pulled forward. When I heard this question, I immediately thought to myself, “Inertia.” But Feynman’s father answered, “Noone knows… The accepted belief is that things that are moving tend to stay moving and things that are at rest tend to stay at rest unless something pushes them, but noone knows why that is.” I found that very interesting and enlightening. There is a difference between knowing the name of something or being able to describe it, and knowing the why and the how of something. Why do objects at rest tend to stay at rest and objects in motion tend to stay in motion? Feynman expounds further on what it means to Know something throughout the interview.